VAN ZWEDEN CONDUCTS MENDELSSOHN
New York Philharmonic Inon Barnatan, piano - Christopher Martin, trumpetVan Zweden returns to lead the Philharmonic in two contrasting Russian works: Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich’s Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, featuring Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and pianist Inon Barnatan. Concluding the program is Mendelssohn’s cherished Symphony No. 3.
Did you know?
Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, inspired a visit to that land, sounds ever-so-Scottish to us, but Robert Schumann, wearing his critic’s hat, somehow got this confused with Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and found the Scottish to harbor “melodies sung in lovely Italy.” Oops.
Featured Artists
Jaap van Zweden
Christopher Martin
Inon Barnatan
Jaap van Zweden
conductor
Jaap van Zweden began his tenure as the 26th music director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2018. He also serves as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a post he has held since 2012, and becomes music director of the Seoul Philharmonic in 2024. He has conducted orchestras on three continents, appearing as guest with, in Europe, the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, and, in the United States, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and other distinguished ensembles.
In 2023–24, Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic farewell season will celebrate his connection with the Orchestra’s musicians as he leads performances in which six principal players appear as concerto soloists. He also revisits the oeuvres of composers he has championed at the Philharmonic, ranging from Steve Reich and Joel Thompson to Mozart, conducting the Requiem, and Mahler, leading the Symphony No. 2, Resurrection.
By the conclusion of his Philharmonic tenure, which has included the reopening of the transformed David Geffen Hall, he will have led the Orchestra in world, US, and New York premieres of 31 works. Among them are pieces commissioned through Project 19 — which marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment with new works by 19 women composers, among them Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride. During the 2021–22 season, when David Geffen Hall was closed for renovation, he conducted the Orchestra at other New York City venues — including his first-ever Philharmonic appearances at Carnegie Hall — and in the residency at the Usedom Music Festival, where the New York Philharmonic was the first American orchestra to perform abroad since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic inaugurated the new David Geffen Hall in October 2022 with HOME, a monthlong housewarming for the Orchestra and its audiences. Other 2022–23 season highlights include SPIRIT, a musical expression of the trials and triumphs of the human spirit featuring performances of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie and J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and EARTH, a response to the climate crisis that includes Julia Wolfe’s unEarth and John Luther Adams’s Become Desert. Over the course of David Geffen Hall’s inaugural season, he conducted repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Bruckner to premieres by Marcos Balter, Etienne Charles, Caroline Shaw, and Carlos Simon, in addition to the works by Wolfe and Adams.
Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic recordings include the World Premiere of David Lang’s prisoner of the state (2020), and Wolfe’s GRAMMY-nominated Fire in my mouth (2019), both released on the Decca Gold label. He conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic in first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, released on the Naxos label. His acclaimed performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal — the last of which earned him the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012 — are available on CD and DVD.
Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden, at age 19, was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career almost 20 years later, in 1996. In April 2023, van Zweden receives the Concertgebouw Prize, for exceptional contributions to that organization’s artistic profile. He remains conductor emeritus of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and honorary chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was chief conductor (2005–13); he also served as chief conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra (2008–11), and as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (2008–18). Under his leadership, the Hong Kong Philharmonic was named Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year in 2019. He was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile on the occasion of his arrival at the New York Philharmonic.
In 1997 Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism. The Foundation has grown into a multifaceted organization that focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work, and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and, more recently, launched the app TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.
Christopher Martin
trumpet
Christopher Martin is one of the leading classical trumpet voices on the world stage. He joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Trumpet, The Paula Levin Chair, in September 2016. He served as principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) for 11 seasons and enjoyed a distinctive career of more than 20 years in some of America’s finest orchestras, including as principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and associate principal trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his New York Philharmonic solo debut in October 2016, performing Ligeti’s The Mysteries of the Macabre, led by then Music Director Alan Gilbert.
Praised as “brilliant, impeccable” by The New York Times and as a musician of “effortless understated virtuosity” by The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Martin has appeared as soloist multiple times nationally and internationally with the CSO and music director Riccardo Muti. Highlights of Martin’s solo appearances include the 2012 World Premiere of Christopher Rouse’s concerto Heimdall’s Trumpet; Panufnik’s Concerto in modo antico, with Muti; a program of 20th-century French concertos by André Jolivet and Henri Tomasi; and more than a dozen performances of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Other solo engagements have included Martin with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Festival, Atlanta and Alabama Symphony Orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Christopher Martin’s discography includes a solo performance in John Williams’s score to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) and two recordings of a concerto Martin co-commissioned: John Mackey’s Antique Violences.
Dedicated to music education, Martin is a professor of trumpet at The Juilliard School and has given master classes and seminars around the world. He has served on the faculty of Northwestern University and coached the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for 11 years. In 2010 he co-founded the National Brass Symposium with his brother Michael Martin, a trumpeter in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 2016 he received the Edwin Franko Goldman Memorial Citation from the American Bandmasters Association for outstanding contributions to the wind band genre.
Christopher Martin is a Yamaha Performing Artist. He and his wife, Margaret — an organist and pianist — have two young children who both prefer the piano over the trumpet.
Inon Barnatan
piano
Barnatan's 2023-24 season highlights include concerto performances in the U.S. with the Colorado Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and internationally with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and London Philharmonic Orchestra. Barnatan will give solo recitals presented at Spivey Hall, The Phillips Collection, Leeds International Piano Series, Wigmore Hall, The Norwegian Opera and Ballet, and The 92nd Street Y. Barnatan will also have collaborations throughout the season with Renée Fleming at the University of Michigan's University Music Society, Celebrity Series of Boston, McCallum Theatre, and La Jolla Music Society, as well as with Alisa Weilerstein at Modlin Center for the Arts, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Wigmore Hall, and Barcelona Obertura, among many other collaborations with other artists this season. Barnatan will also have a residency at the University of Michigan's University Musical Society which will include performances with Renée Fleming, the Jerusalem Quartet, as well as various masterclasses, coachings, and more.
In November 2023, Barnatan releases his album, Rachmaninoff Reflections, offering some of the composer's most cherished piano works, including his Moments musicaux, Prelude in G-Sharp Minor, and Barnatan's own arrangement of the Vocalise. The centerpiece of this project is Barnatan's breathtaking new piano arrangement of the Symphonic Dances. Barnatan’s acclaimed discography also includes a two-volume set of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos, recorded with Alan Gilbert and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on Pentatone. In its review, BBC Music Magazine wrote “The central strength of this first installment of Inon Barnatan’s piano concertos cycle is that, time and again, it puts you in touch with that feeling of ongoing wonderment.” In 2021 he released his Time-Traveler Suite album on Pentatone, a program that merged Baroque movements by Bach, Handel, Rameau and Couperin with movements by Ravel, Ligeti, Barber and Thomas Adès, culminating in Brahms’ Variations on a theme by Handel. He has also released a live recording of Messiaen’s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles (“From the Canyons to the Stars”), in which he played the exceptionally challenging solo piano part at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In 2015 he released Rachmaninov & Chopin: Cello Sonatas on Decca Classics with Alisa Weilerstein, earning rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. His solo recording of Schubert’s late piano sonatas on Avie won praise from such publications as Gramophone and BBC Music, while his account of the great A-major Sonata (D. 959) was chosen by BBC Radio 3 as one of the all-time best recordings of the piece. His 2012 album, Darknesse Visible, debuted in the Top 25 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart, and was named BBC Music’s “Instrumentalist CD of the Month” and won a coveted place on the New York Times’ “Best of 2012” list. He made his solo recording debut with a Schubert album, released by Bridge Records in 2006, that prompted Gramophone to hail him as “a born Schubertian”.
Barnatan’s 2022-23 season included concerto performances in the U.S. with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and internationally with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, and Philharmonie Zuidnederland. Barnatan gave solo recitals in London, Kansas City, Aspen and Santa Fe, and played chamber music at festivals through the USA. Barnatan also toured North America with Les Violons du Roy, performing concertos by CPE Bach and Shostakovich.
Previous career highlights include return performances with the Chicago Symphony and the London Philharmonic, as well as debuts with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony orchestras, and a recreation of Beethoven’s legendary 1808 concert, which featured the world premieres of his Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy, and Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, with Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony. Barnatan gave solo recitals at Celebrity Series of Boston, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, and London’s Southbank Centre, and made his debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Chamber music highlights included tours with Renée Fleming, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the Calidore Quartet, violinist Sergey Khachatryan, and percussionist Colin Currie. As Artistic Director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Barnatan has collaborated with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, visionary director and visual artist Doug Fitch, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Garrick Ohlsson, Augustin Hadelich, Caroline Shaw, Carter Brey, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and more.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three, when his parents discovered his perfect pitch, and made his orchestral debut at eleven. His musical education connects him to some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied first with Professor Victor Derevianko, a student of the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, before moving to London in 1997 to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Maria Curcio, a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel. The late Leon Fleisher was also an influential teacher and mentor.
Program Highlights
- Jaap van Zweden, conductor
- Christopher Martin, trumpet
- Inon Barnatan, piano
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1, Classical
SHOSTAKOVICH Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish
Program Notes
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical (1916-17)
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical
Allegro
Larghetto
Gavotte: Non troppo allegro
Finale: Molto vivace
Sergei Prokofiev’s conducting professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Nikolai Tcherepnin, adored the music of the Classical era and encouraged his students to immerse themselves in the works of Haydn and Mozart to see what inspiration they could extract for their own compositions. A happy result was Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, meticulously worked out in 1916-17 and premiered the following year, just before the composer left his politically explosive homeland for a very extended residence in America and Western Europe. (The year of the Classical Symphony’s completion was also the year of the Czar’s abdication, the October Revolution, and Lenin’s ascent to political power.)
Prokofiev later explained that his intent was to translate musical Classicism into a specifically 20th-century idiom. “It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the Classical style.” His decision to give the work its familiar nickname seems to have derived from two impetuses: on one hand, it is a logical reference to its sources; on the other, the composer explained that he “secretly hoped that in the course of time it might itself turn out to be a classic.”
This was the first major work that Prokofiev, a superb pianist, composed without the intermediary of the keyboard. “I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano,” he recounted. “A composition written this way would probably have more transparent orchestral colors.” The Classical Symphony is transparent indeed, as transparent as a fine diamond. Set in the “sunny” 18th-century key of D major, it employs the forces of a Classical orchestra to crisp effect.
Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35 (1933)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)
Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35
Allegretto
Lento
Moderato
Allegro con brio
(Played without pause)
Shostakovich composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in the aftermath of the censure he received from Soviet apparatchiks for his opera The Nose following its staging in early 1930. Stung by the attack, he realized that he had no option but to atone, or at least behave in a way that could be interpreted as such; but his efforts seemed only to make things worse. During this period of turmoil he all but ceased appearing as a concert pianist, which had been an essential strand of his earlier musical persona, but in early 1933 he began focusing on the keyboard again, at first producing a series of Twenty-four Preludes (Op. 34) and, immediately on the heels of that cycle, his First Piano Concerto. At about this time he told a friend that he was considering giving up composing and returning to his career as a concert pianist, an understandable temptation in light of the problems his compositions had caused him. Fortunately, the Concerto proved to be wildly successful and quickly entered the repertoire as a must-play piece.
Shostakovich wisely refused to comment on the “inner meaning” of this work—not that he wasn’t asked. This left the delighted listeners to simply revel in its optimistic bonhomie and its understated references to Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, and various styles of popular music; and it left the critics without anything to attack, for a change. He did explain that when he started working on this piece he envisioned it as a trumpet concerto, that he gradually began imagining a supporting piano part, and that by the time he finished, the instruments’ roles had become reversed, making this a piano concerto with an unusually prominent role for the trumpet.
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
Andante con moto — Allegro un poco
agitato
Vivace non troppo
Adagio
Allegro vivacissimo — Allegro maestoso
assai
Although Felix Mendelssohn did not begin focusing on his Symphony No. 3 until 1840, its genealogy dates back to 1829, when he made his first trip to the British Isles—his first of ten, it would turn out. After taking in the cultural swirl of London, he and a friend left for three weeks in Scotland, which Mendelssohn documented through drawings and sketches: Edinburgh, the Highlands, the islands of Staffa and Iona, Glasgow. On July 30, he visited the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and wrote to his family in Berlin: “In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved. ... The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.” Then he jotted down 16 measures of music in piano score with notations indicating instrumentation; and a decade later they would indeed grow into the Andante con moto introduction of the Scottish Symphony. Mendelssohn does not draw on Scottish melodies in his score, but listeners have been happy to hear its flavor as authentically Scottish in spirit, replete with pentatonic melodies, bass drones (suggesting bagpipes), parallel progressions of open-spaced chords, and sparkling rhythms (including so-called “Scotch snaps,” consisting of a quick note on an accented beat followed by a longer note on an unaccented one). The Caledonian association will be inalienable to many audiences today thanks to the work’s use in George Balanchine’s kilted ballet setting, under the title Scotch Symphony, a staple in the dance repertoire since it was unveiled in 1952.
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